A Lover's Requiem
by unrecognizablesn
Summary: Erik finds that suffering is the sacrifice he must offer to live. Christine returns to the Phantom to fulfill her promise, only to find that he has not truly fulfilled the end of his bargain...
1. Consumed with Fire

"A Lover's Requiem"

Chapter I – Consumed with Fire

by peppermintoreo

"I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed." – Christabel LaMotte, from _Possession_

**_Nadir, 6 months after_ Don Juan the Triumphant…**

I entered the desolate place, which had been trashed by the mob that came to imprison him after _Don Juan the Triumphant_. I sighed a breath of relief to see that the organ had somehow survived their eradication of his throne; the brutality they unleashed upon his treasures was only seconded to vicious pillages involved in wars we witnessed in Persia. Ashes of his music piled the swan bed, which had melted like a gray candle…it was rumored that a violin he locked away with a key he wore around his neck was used to light the flames. The air was left so lifeless that its frigidity made the breath escape my lips in wisps of smoke.

It was hardly surprising to see Erik's mouth was clear of air; Sweet Passion had taken Erik's fingers to mold his heart upon the keys, only to leave his need for a nourishing breath abandoned.

"_In my heart's sequestered chambers_

_lie truths stripped of poet's gloss_

_words alone are vain and vacant_

_and my heart is mute."_

I treaded among the debris carefully, attempting to leave him in peace, but I knew well that Erik had observed my presence the moment I set foot to his lair. Without taking his eyes off of the composition, he said, "Did you know, Nadir, that the pain that comes after a death of a lover does not compare to pain of merely parting with their love?" Erik tilted is head back slightly, his eyes half-closed, and began to play the ghosts of his forsaken home, once the vision of himself: the sweetest, simplest dream lighted by candles, of love and its devilish shadows. My eyes followed the words he had written for music that stood on the edges of a miserable hope:

"_In response to aching silence, **memory summons half-heard voices**._"

"Oh?" I asked as I sat down on a stool nearby. I looked at him intently...I knew for the present he needed someone to listen to him than berate him about the dangers of his place. "I was always under the impression that losing them forever could be worse. That relationship would never manifest itself between the lovers ever again." He sang on:

"_And my soul finds primal eloquence_

_And wraps me in song_

_Wraps me…in song"_

"That's where you are wrong, Daroga." He scratched out three measures of notes, slicing the delicate page with the blade of his pen. Smashing his ink bottle in his rush to fill his pen, he said in a faltering voice, "With death, God is kind enough to destroy all hope of ever restoring love that was forged in Passion's fire. It is child's play compared to separation with a loved one."

"_If you would comfort me_

_Sing me a lullaby_

_If you would win my heart_

_Sing me a love song_

_If you would mourn me and bring me to God_

_Sing me a requiem_

_Sing me to heaven!"_

"You play a requiem…a song for the dead, Erik."

"You surprise me with your assertion, Daroga. A requiem is not a song for the dead; it is a song for the survivors of the dead, for those that have lived. What else could be more fitting in describing myself in losing her?" The song began its tender crescendo, all of his desire espousing the words:

"_Touch in me all **love and passion**_

_**Pain and sorrow**_

_Touch in me…_

**_Grief and comfort_**

_**Love and passion**_

_**Pain and pleasure.**"_

"The fact that she's only left me means that there is a chance that we can find each other again, Daroga." Tears began to leave their trail where his fingers had been on the keys. "What I want is still here, yet I cannot have it. Don't you see now, Daroga, why a requiem is so fitting?" Erik gracefully put his voice into falsetto, the sound like a cherub, the childish angel. The words were clear yet so abstract; it was so unlike Erik to treat love with such bare words, without the sensual poetry that could only describe what stirred within his soul.

"_Sing me a lullaby_

_a love song_

_a requiem…"_

He deepened in his need…his human need…he darkened his vibrato as tears began to slip from his eyes:

"_**Love me…"**_

"I am living more than I have ever lived, because I feel this pain! The more this misery fills me, the more I am aware of the existence of my heart…" he began to ramble. "What hasn't killed me yet haunts my mind every night. I see oceans of her face, Daroga, but remain in the desert, parched of her love! This pain, Daroga, it keeps me alive!"

His voice softened again

"_Comfort me…_

He pounded on the keys:

_BRING ME TO GOD!"_

The air was stiff as he abruptly ended the note. He recovered his breath and released a gentle melody of acceptance that engulfed us in the deep hollowness in which Erik conveyed the notes. Though his back was turned, the resonance was alluring: sound was all around me.

"_Sing me a love song…_

_Sing me to Heaven."_

His hands suddenly left the organ as if it had been heated by the flames of Hell. His voice danced upon sinister thoughts. "Is there a God, Daroga? Surely this world must be heaven or if not, hell. If there is nothing after death, everything is permitted. There was no God until she…" He grabbed onto me for dear life, his head bobbed in the space between us as he fell to his knees.

He hushed himself in an instant, where a lingering sound of metal clanging against the stone reverberated through his domain.

Disclaimer(s): I don't own _The Phantom of the Opera_ by Gaston Leroux. This story presents characters/characterizations/songs from Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical and Susan Kay's _Phantom_, but I don't own those either. Just think about the flashing dollar signs that would appear in my hallucinations if I did!

"Sing Me to Heaven" was composed by Daniel E. Gawthrop.


	2. A Return

"A Lover's Requiem"

Chapter II – A Return

by peppermintoreo

"_Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.  
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well  
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell._"

–William Shakespeare, Sonnet 129: "Th'expense of spirit in a waste of shame…"

_**Christine**_

I had spent the last six months trying to infuse Raoul into my very being, to let moments of his tender love _replace whatever I could recall in my memory._ My heart trembled uncomfortably at the ease which my mind and body recalled its way back to Erik's home. _This is the final purging_, I thought to myself; God was compelling me to take my last glimpse of Hell as a warning to what would happen should I fall again. It was essential before I could begin my ascension, to be rid of all earthly pain. After fulfilling the final pact, I would be free.

My chest drummed an agitated beat.

_Yes, I would be free_.

There was little light afforded to me that evening but sojourning out during the daylight was almost impossible. Raoul in his own way had forbidden me to return, masking his wishes with uncomfortable silences after I showed him Erik's obituary in _La Époque_. No more pain between us, I thought. I would make this journey alone, in secret. No one can escape the Devil once you stride in His path; we were lucky to have even escaped once.

After _Don Juan the Triumphant_, all I wanted was quick emancipation from Paris…the only thing I carried with me on our flight to Rome was Erik's ring. I never read _La Époque_. News of Erik's death arrived by mail a week ago, borne by a messenger under strict instructions never to reveal who had sent the clipping. I invited the poor boy into my home, prepared to shower him with gold coins or the precious family heirlooms of which I had no claim over only as Raoul's betrothed — whatever I could scourge up to bribe the messenger— to no avail of revealing an address or even the sender.

"Erik is dead," the article said. My body shook entirely after my eyes met the words...the flimsy clipping left my hands as my legs gave way, knees meeting the strength of the hardwood floor beneath the luxurious carpeting in one swift, agonizing movement.

Was it relief I felt? Dread? No tears beaded my eyes nor did a sigh of relief leave my lips.

There was a heaviness that blanketed itself around my head, my shoulders as I picked myself off the floor. Then the days were spent almost idle unless it was completely necessary to move, for which there was hardly an occasion. People traipsed in and out of my suite constantly, asking me mindless questions as I mindlessly answered them. My nights were filled with a dormant restlessness. My mind just seemed too full to allow any functioning of my body. I stayed awake during the nights, letting the fatigue drain any clarity of thought. The numbness kept me blissful, delayed the horrible truth that was waiting for me in the prison I created for my mind, so free from the burning reality.

But the candles...the candles that are burning around me and casting long shadows along these cavern walls, encasing me, making me aware of my own madness. It was very clear I was, because I could hear music again…what other strange entity existed in this world other than Erik would play such notes, such soul-trapping harmony, here, in this very domain?

The cloud has lifted…the touch he gave me was real…

"_My soul?" Erik spat. His voice plunged me in a pot of helplessness, as if his pained essence of his soul…whatever existed within him…had left his body to ravage what little sanity I had left. The ropes bound around my neck and wrists began to burn my skin, the Devil in his voice commanding them to stop the blood from rushing into my pallid face and hands. All of the steady anger I armed myself with before…for Raoul, for myself… withered away the moment I entered Erik's domain. It was there where everything was in his control. The passion that lay dormant after all those years of cold indifference or hidden within tender desires ignited the dead coals that were his eyes and filled my veins with fear. Yet he possessed me entirely._

_Madly. _

_Desperately._

_**The thought of him replaced whatever I could recall in my memory**__**…**_

"_You gave me your heart, your faith, so I tried to give you the closest thing I had to a spirit…" He removed his gloves and placed the tip of his finger on the base of my left ear and slid it down my jaw to guide me to his visage. My neck knitted so tightly into the iron gate, I could only close my eyes to free myself of his face…those eyes could tell me more about the sorrow trapped within him than that devilish finger, or that voice that so often wrapped me in dark melodies._

"_My music…my music…" he chanted._

_Resist, Christine. You must fight, you have done this before. Yet I felt my body lay limp against the iron gate, clutching the bars as he removed my bindings. He pressed his palm…that merciless, bare hand!...against my face. My skin welcomed his moist touch with ecstasy as I felt my soul leave my earthly body. _

_What new sensation is this? Powerless in all my actions, I became the voyeur of my own experiences…I tried desperately to put out the fire, only to find out it had already burned everything I had. I could feel the throbbing swell of my chest yet I felt like I could do nothing but watch from above…_

_Those two glorious strips of flesh that were his lips suddenly hovered over my face, returning me to my body, wanting me to provoke more of his touch…_

A hard object seemed to tighten itself around my finger, as if it responded to the overtones of the magical voice that began to take me out of my self-made ignorance into a novel lunacy...His ring, Erik's ring! My left finger began to prickle and the skin was cold.

The brightness faded. The frigid temperatures sent shivers up my spine. There were no candles, except one, glowing beyond the heavy tarpaulin that covered the destroyed entrance into his domain…

"_Sing me a lullaby…_"

That was no heavenly voice.

"_A love song…a requiem…"_

I shut out the tears and cried out silently as I freed my finger from the death grip of his flawless gold wedding band...That voice was so unbearably human, more human that I could ever admit.

"**_Love me…"_**

As soon as the ring hit the stone floor, I picked up my skirts and ran. To where?

If God were kind, to oblivion.

Love is given away; if true, you never expect its return.

* * *

Disclaimers: I don't own _The Phantom of the Opera_ by Gaston Leroux. This story presents characters/characterizations/songs from Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical and Susan Kay's _Phantom_, but I don't own those either.

"Sing Me to Heaven" was composed by Daniel E. Gawthrop

Underlined phrases areused with permission from fellow phan and LiveJournal user, lowdivejenny


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